Training at an older age is something all of us will experience sooner or later....
If you look around you will see that a large percentage of the people training at any class, seminar, training school or gasshuku are fifty years or more while the rest, often less than half the numbers, are younger. How you train at an older age is going to be dependent on several factors — your actual age, the age you think you are, and your physical condition. If you think of yourself as being old, the tendency is to act like that. On the other hand if you always imagine yourself to be younger than you are, again you will act accordingly. These perceptions are subconscious and although we are often unaware of them they do have a major influence on how we present ourselves to the world around us. If you started Aikido when you were much younger then the way you can practice at an older age will differ greatly from someone who started Aikido much later in life. I believe it is never too late to start no matter what age you are, but you must take into consideration your physical ability to move, reaction time, and your muscle strength some of which may be lacking at an older age. However this shouldn’t be discouraging if you are careful and do not try to do what younger people or experienced people can do, but stay within the limits you are capable of managing. These you will discover quickly once you start.In my case, I started Aikido when I was 50 years old. Until I was 47 I had not done any martial art other than some 3 months of Judo when I was at University High School back in 1956. I am now seventy one years old. I started Karate when I was 47 because I had to take my son to training and decided since I was there for the duration I might as well join in. We used to train 5 days a week, and it was here, although I was fit because I had always led an active life which at one point involved a lot of scuba diving and skindiving, I discovered that I was not able to match the teenage students or those in their early twenties, in speed or agility. There was a 30 year age gap, and there is no way you can bridge that no matter how young you think you are.I gave up Karate after 3 years, and in 1989 while on a long trip to South America with my wife and son, I found I missed the training and together we looked for something else and discovered Aikido. Jorge Rojo who was at that time the technical director of Aiki Kai Chile explained that age wasn’t a problem especially considering that I was fit and healthy, but nevertheless he would take into consideration my age of fifty when he was teaching. He was very good in this, as were all the senior students in his dojo. They always trained with me at a level that I was capable of understanding and doing. As result I progressed at a good pace for the three months I was there. Also my son and I went to the dojo to practice every day except Saturday, and Sunday when they didn’t have classes.No one thinks they are as old as they are. Ask anyone how old they feel and invariably the answer will be somewhere around ten years younger than their actual age. Why is that? My theory is that because in actuality we are not physically any older than that. Every cell in a human body is replaced over and over— every cell. For some cells like cartilage it could be over a ten year period while every other cell on average is replaced over a seven year period. Skin cells however are replaced every few weeks. Other questions arise: With the oldest cell in your body no more than ten years old why is it that we look older? Why don’t we retain our youthful looks for ever or at least until we die? The answer lies in transcription errors caused by the poisonous effects of oxygen as a free radical molecule. We need oxygen to live, but the same dangerous stuff is also slowly killing us. It causes the genes that determine cell replacement to sometimes make errors. These errors are then replicated during which more errors can be made and again replicated. In effect each new cell is not an exact copy of itself but a slightly inferior copy. As this goes on over the decades our cells although relatively young produce an aged body. It shows up first with the skin which loses elasticity and becomes more and more wrinkled. Skin cells are replaced every few weeks so after many more replications than cells that make up other organs, the errors become visible sooner.What does this mean to someone who wants to take up Aikido after they are fifty if they haven’t had an active life? It means that their muscles won’t have the same strength or flexibility of someone younger. It means that their reaction time to something happening will be slower. Their ability to learn something new may take longer to process and become embedded. Aikido is initially difficult for many people because they must learn to move differently; often quite a lot different to what they have become accustomed to doing over their whole lifetime to that point. They must in effect retrain their core body movements which at first will seem extremely awkward, but in time will become to be considered very natural. Everyone, young and old goes through this experience, and unless they actually get on the mat and try they will never be able to appreciate this, because it is not obvious from sitting on the side and watching. The older you are when you start the more difficult it is and for those who have started at an older age and continue on I have nothing but admiration because I know how hard it can be.Those who started young and have grown older and still practice may be discovering they are not as agile as they once were, that they are more prone to injuries which inevitably take longer to heal, and so they too come to the realization that they cannot practice in the way they did when they were younger. They must of necessity adapt their training to suit their age, perhaps preferring to train with other older Aikidoka rather than the more vigorous young ones. Although they may be slower, they most likely have learnt over many years to be more economical with movement, to internalize it more, and to have better timing in relation to when they must move, which may even though they are slower, appear to be faster. And because they move at exactly the right instant they don’t need to use muscle strength to any
If you look around you will see that a large percentage of the people training at any class, seminar, training school or gasshuku are fifty years or more while the rest, often less than half the numbers, are younger. How you train at an older age is going to be dependent on several factors — your actual age, the age you think you are, and your physical condition. If you think of yourself as being old, the tendency is to act like that. On the other hand if you always imagine yourself to be younger than you are, again you will act accordingly. These perceptions are subconscious and although we are often unaware of them they do have a major influence on how we present ourselves to the world around us. If you started Aikido when you were much younger then the way you can practice at an older age will differ greatly from someone who started Aikido much later in life. I believe it is never too late to start no matter what age you are, but you must take into consideration your physical ability to move, reaction time, and your muscle strength some of which may be lacking at an older age. However this shouldn’t be discouraging if you are careful and do not try to do what younger people or experienced people can do, but stay within the limits you are capable of managing. These you will discover quickly once you start.In my case, I started Aikido when I was 50 years old. Until I was 47 I had not done any martial art other than some 3 months of Judo when I was at University High School back in 1956. I am now seventy one years old. I started Karate when I was 47 because I had to take my son to training and decided since I was there for the duration I might as well join in. We used to train 5 days a week, and it was here, although I was fit because I had always led an active life which at one point involved a lot of scuba diving and skindiving, I discovered that I was not able to match the teenage students or those in their early twenties, in speed or agility. There was a 30 year age gap, and there is no way you can bridge that no matter how young you think you are.I gave up Karate after 3 years, and in 1989 while on a long trip to South America with my wife and son, I found I missed the training and together we looked for something else and discovered Aikido. Jorge Rojo who was at that time the technical director of Aiki Kai Chile explained that age wasn’t a problem especially considering that I was fit and healthy, but nevertheless he would take into consideration my age of fifty when he was teaching. He was very good in this, as were all the senior students in his dojo. They always trained with me at a level that I was capable of understanding and doing. As result I progressed at a good pace for the three months I was there. Also my son and I went to the dojo to practice every day except Saturday, and Sunday when they didn’t have classes.No one thinks they are as old as they are. Ask anyone how old they feel and invariably the answer will be somewhere around ten years younger than their actual age. Why is that? My theory is that because in actuality we are not physically any older than that. Every cell in a human body is replaced over and over— every cell. For some cells like cartilage it could be over a ten year period while every other cell on average is replaced over a seven year period. Skin cells however are replaced every few weeks. Other questions arise: With the oldest cell in your body no more than ten years old why is it that we look older? Why don’t we retain our youthful looks for ever or at least until we die? The answer lies in transcription errors caused by the poisonous effects of oxygen as a free radical molecule. We need oxygen to live, but the same dangerous stuff is also slowly killing us. It causes the genes that determine cell replacement to sometimes make errors. These errors are then replicated during which more errors can be made and again replicated. In effect each new cell is not an exact copy of itself but a slightly inferior copy. As this goes on over the decades our cells although relatively young produce an aged body. It shows up first with the skin which loses elasticity and becomes more and more wrinkled. Skin cells are replaced every few weeks so after many more replications than cells that make up other organs, the errors become visible sooner.What does this mean to someone who wants to take up Aikido after they are fifty if they haven’t had an active life? It means that their muscles won’t have the same strength or flexibility of someone younger. It means that their reaction time to something happening will be slower. Their ability to learn something new may take longer to process and become embedded. Aikido is initially difficult for many people because they must learn to move differently; often quite a lot different to what they have become accustomed to doing over their whole lifetime to that point. They must in effect retrain their core body movements which at first will seem extremely awkward, but in time will become to be considered very natural. Everyone, young and old goes through this experience, and unless they actually get on the mat and try they will never be able to appreciate this, because it is not obvious from sitting on the side and watching. The older you are when you start the more difficult it is and for those who have started at an older age and continue on I have nothing but admiration because I know how hard it can be.Those who started young and have grown older and still practice may be discovering they are not as agile as they once were, that they are more prone to injuries which inevitably take longer to heal, and so they too come to the realization that they cannot practice in the way they did when they were younger. They must of necessity adapt their training to suit their age, perhaps preferring to train with other older Aikidoka rather than the more vigorous young ones. Although they may be slower, they most likely have learnt over many years to be more economical with movement, to internalize it more, and to have better timing in relation to when they must move, which may even though they are slower, appear to be faster. And because they move at exactly the right instant they don’t need to use muscle strength to any
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